Grafana
ATH InfosystemsExternal reviews
15 reviews
from
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Open-source solutions work adequately but future AI enhancements and advanced tracing capabilities are desired
What is our primary use case?
We actually work with BMC and similar solutions, and while I wouldn't say that they are the same as a full, fully-fledged APM, we're working our way up using open source and everything, so I don't know how far we'll get with that. We're a government agency, and although these costly tools are very efficient and useful, it's hard for me to convince the organization about that, especially since we're not allowed to use public cloud solutions, so we have an on-prem solution, which makes us a demanding customer.We use BMC Helix with the AIOps solution, and while all of these are public domain knowledge because we have to be open with how we procure and purchase our services, I am not the one who would purchase such a system. I would be the customer to it and someone else would host it, while I work more with observability, such as the Grafana stack and the cloud-native solutions.We're working with Grafana more actively now for maybe a couple of years, and we are looking at Tempo and the tracing solutions to see if it will scale. We have metrics back-ends and everything, and we're basically late-stage discovery, early-stage implementation at large scale, with 1,400 people in our tech organization and a 14,000 people organization, where the technology side is just 10%.We get alerts from the alerting tools, and we act on them. I'm looking now at logs, Grafana, trace profiles, and while we're not yet into AI/ML and root-cause analysis, we do focus on alerting and, to some extent, plugins and app observability, mainly utilizing the basics for now.
What is most valuable?
We use Tempo for tracing and, of course, alerting and monitoring metrics. We've tested some features but we're only using a few of them actually, so I can't provide the full range of what different tools Grafana offers as an open-source project, but it's definitely useful for monitoring, alerting, logs, and analysis.Grafana integrates with some of the tools we've chosen beforehand, and while I'm not the right person to elaborate on this since I'm more focused on managing big teams, the teams working with it seem happy. We used to have performance issues, which could be due to running it in an OpenShift environment, but functionality-wise, it seems to be useful, albeit not offering the same power tools as APM such as AppDynamics.
What needs improvement?
The whole AI capability would be useful for Grafana in the future, and while I don't think we're mature yet, I would want to see improvements, especially in the tracing part, where following different requests between different services could be more powerful.
For how long have I used the solution?
Depending on how you define use, whether it's in production or just dabbling with it, I would say that using it actively with a subset of the team has been for maybe two years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
You have to scale horizontally to deal with issues.
How are customer service and support?
We might have gotten help from technical support, but I'm not sure how much since I haven't seen an invoice for purchasing support, so it's probably community open-source style.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
What other advice do I have?
I would probably recommend Grafana for monitoring and analytics tasks, but since I haven't really pushed it to the limits from a non-functional perspective, I would hesitate if someone from a high-scale Telco environment asked for my recommendation.I rate Grafana a six out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Effective alerting and user management enhance monitoring but needs a better interface
What is our primary use case?
I use Grafana mostly for monitoring purposes, such as tracking errors or alerts. When certain thresholds of warnings or errors are breached, Grafana sends me an alert because I am supplying it with data. Another use case I have is monitoring CPU usage and bandwidth.
What is most valuable?
I find Grafana beneficial due to its numerous plugins. Its alerting feature is effective because it allows me to set thresholds to send an email if a certain threshold is met. User management is good, and the administration features enable me to control user access.
What needs improvement?
The interface is not well-liked by my customers. Grafana cannot be easily embedded into certain applications and offers limited customization options for graphs. I think predictive capabilities in alerting could also be improved.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is uncertain for me since I installed Grafana on only one server and did not scale it further.
How was the initial setup?
The setup process was easy for me to follow. I just needed to adhere to a step-by-step guide which was quite straightforward.
What other advice do I have?
I end up using my own customized open-source visualization tool instead of Grafana. Most of the time, I deal with technical aspects.
I rate the overall product seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Can monitor metrics on dashboards but needs to have own query language
What is our primary use case?
We use the tool to monitor metrics on dashboards.
What is most valuable?
It's easy to make changes. We can put many dashboards in one place. There's no delay in showing data - what you see on Grafana matches the server metrics.
What needs improvement?
Grafana could improve by having its own query language. Currently, it uses languages like Prometheus or InfluxDB, which not everyone knows. Their query language should be easier.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the product for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability-wise, our on-premises version was mixed, but the cloud version is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
My company has 2000 users.
How was the initial setup?
Setting up Grafana is moderately difficult, especially writing query languages and custom metrics. Creating custom metrics requires writing new query language at the server level, which can be challenging.
What other advice do I have?
If you want to use Grafana for the first time, I'd say you can. It's cost-effective compared to other products like Datadog. But if cost isn't an issue, I'd recommend Datadog. For beginners, learning to use Grafana is moderately difficult. I rate it a seven out of ten.
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Google
Easy to set up monitoring solution that could improve its end-point monitoring
What is our primary use case?
In my company, we regularly use it to monitor the status of our running reports, CPU usage, memory applications, and other relevant metrics.
What needs improvement?
The main drawback is the necessity for endpoint monitoring. Due to this requirement, we faced challenges in fetching details related to endpoint monitoring. We are considering the implementation of better tools.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for the past two and a half years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I have around 20 to 30 people using the solution in my company.
How are customer service and support?
I’m not involved with contacting customer service.
How was the initial setup?
The installation process is easy. We have deployed it on the cloud.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I rate the product a seven out of ten.
A good solution to track all the servers and platforms, but it needs to improve its configuration part
What is our primary use case?
I copied it on my primary server. I use it to monitor servers. I would say it is a good solution to track all the servers and platforms, specifically the technical platforms.
What is most valuable?
Grafana has such features that it need not exist on other products.
What needs improvement?
I had issues with the solution's configuration part. Though I resolved it, the configuration is an area needing improvement since it is the solution's only problem.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have experience using Grafana. I am a new user of the tool.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a seven and a half out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Grafana is a very scalable product. It's a really good product.
I know many people who use Grafana to monitor SuccessFactors.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is not very easy or difficult, so it is in the middle because I faced an issue with it the first time, but the next time, I will configure it and make it work properly and in the correct manner.
What other advice do I have?
To those planning to use the solution, I would say that they need to add the system administrator to use and install Grafana as a monitoring tool to check servers and platforms. It's a good solution to monitor all the platforms.
I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
showing 1 - 5